Zombie Bitches From Hell (12 page)

An orderly shoved me out of the way, reached
down and grabbed the gnashing undead baby by the feet and pulled.
She came away with the Doc’s intestine still in her maw, uncoiling
like a garden hose from the hole that used to be his dick and
balls.

The bitch on the gurney lifted her head and
started to laugh. Not a Ha-Ha kind of laugh like you’re doing when
you’ve had a few drinks and some lame stand-up comic is making his
jokes. It was a high-pitched hooting, almost a howl that got inside
your spine and made you think, maybe we’re all better off dead.
Another lesson for today. GaGa bitches could laugh. And if they
could laugh, they could reason. This was not good, not good on
anyone’s planet.

We heard shots being fired. Laurie continued
squirming and hooting, kicking like mad and snapping her jaws
frantically. The slop bucket got knocked over and one of the
orderlies slipped in the spilled mess and fell onto the Doc’s dead
body. The guy in the green smock grabbed two scalpels, one in each
hand, and came down on her abdomen, drove those things right
through; I could hear the points hit the metal table top. She
rasped and inhaled like a vacuum cleaner with a too-full bag and
stopped her squirming. The other orderly who still held the newborn
by the feet lifted her up as if to smash her head against the wall,
when the door burst open and a guard rushed in.

“They’ve gotten out. The bitches are out.
Save yourselves!” As he said this, a bitch flew through the door
and attacked him from behind, biting the back of his neck. The two
of them spun around and slipped in the slop shit on the floor. Two
others rushed in and got the baby from the orderly and then
attacked him, tearing his guts out and breaking his ribs by pulling
them from the outside in. Yet another bitch entered and took the
baby and ran out with it like a running back looking for the goal
post. I ran into a closet which was not a closet at all but a small
room that held the elevator running gear with a service door for
the elevator itself. The shaft was wide open and when I looked over
the edge, the elevator was sitting down below at the lobby level
twenty feet away.

I had no choice. Either slide down or wait
for the bitches to break in and gut me.

I shimmied down the greasy cable, made it
most of the way before I lost my grip, and fell the last five feet.
Found the hatch door and jumped through into the elevator. I could
hear screaming and gunfire, but I thought it best to make a break
for it. I guessed that the bitches were going to win this fracas
and I was in no frame of mind to be lunch.

CHAPTER 15

The parking lot where we’d landed the balloon
lot looked like a pond under the light of the half moon. Hadley
held my hand tightly and the hairs on the back of my arms stood
straight on end. I know it was a mistake to bring her. I don’t know
why I did. Funny her mother didn’t complain. But she was,
literally, a time bomb. I thought that I might be able to keep her
from contamination. It was just a matter of thought and planning.
She needed to stay in the gondola no matter what and to never be
indoors where GaGas had been within the previous twenty-four hours,
which was the rumored incubation period. It was, under those
circumstances, not impossible. Maybe I was just thinking of myself
as some sort of hero. It never entered my mind before. I don’t do
heroic things and I don’t believe in risk. I never skied or bungee
jumped and I was not even the type that wanted to ride a roller
coaster. I had been cautious all my life—even in relationships. Why
engage in an activity for fun if there is even a remote possibility
that you could get seriously injured or killed? I lived in ski
country, had visited the slopes many times, even took a lesson one
season with a girl named Sue. Even the bunny rabbit hill was
evidence to me that I could mangle my ankles or smash a femur. For
what? To slide down a fucking hill that I had to pay to go up?
Surely you jest.

My uncle who was a car salesman at the local
Caddy dealership once told me, “there was an ass for every seat.”
Watching people rocket down those slopes while I sat in the lodge
looking at tit-filled sweaters and newly plastered casts, I told
myself, “there is an asshole for every sport.” Give me a pool cue
and that’s as risky as I’m going to be. You do it. Enjoy. I’ll
watch and then fuck your girlfriend while you’re in the recovery
room. ‘There, there now sweetie cakes; he’ll be okay. Just don’t be
alone for the first night; it’s a real downer. Come up to my place.
We can watch old movies and you won’t be lonely.’ It never
failed.

But Hadley was different. I could not leave
her back there. Even if she was doomed to turn into a GaGa bitch,
it would not be because I didn’t try to stop it. Fuck heroism; I
did what I needed to do. No moralizing. The world is too far gone
for that.

Tim didn’t look happy about Hadley either and
maybe didn’t feel that putting his neck on the line literally for a
future monster who might now be a sweet little girl was worth it. I
used MG’s collar and created a makeshift bell to attach to it. I
could hear Tim’s argument already:

Listen, Kent. I’m conceding that you’re
brain damaged, bringing this kid along, but you got to make this
concession: she wears this ding-a-ling collar at all times,
twenty-four-seven or I’m outta here. I may end up dead somewhere in
the woods or on the road, but it will be through no fault of my
own. The kid is dangerous, way dangerous. If she turns while I’m
sleeping and I wake up dead, it will be my fault mainly because I
let you talk me into it and then not taking a precaution. I agreed
to do it. A deal’s a deal for now. And I owe you. But I…

She didn’t mind after I told her that: one,
the collar was so we wouldn’t lose her in the dark and two, it was
a way cool fashion statement. Hadley became a jingler—that’s what I
called her. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be dreaming of Santa and Rudolph
when she came near.

***

I tell Hadley that I’m going to scout for
food.

“Don’t wake Tim up. Let him sleep. I’ll be
back before morning,” I tell her. She hugs me around the waist.

“Don’t do anything crazy. Please, Kent. Tell
me you’ll be extra careful. Please. Promise.”

“I promise,” I say meaning it. I’m actually
feeling like I need to live not for my sake but for hers. It’s not
a feeling I’m used to or comfortable with. I leave her by the
campfire and go to the river. The boat is waiting for me. I get in
and start paddling.

CHAPTER 16

My boat was drifting with the uncertain
currents through the night, clouds obscuring the moon and stars as
if a moldy quilt had been cast over the world by a careless
innkeeper not realizing I was adrift and alone at the whim of the
inky river. Black froth licked at the prow and pregnant thuds
knocked at the hull as the boat glided, circling over submerged
stones, the forgotten eggs of long-dead sea monsters. I held
tightly to the sodden seat, looking up and praying to any god that
might listen to the prayers of anyone left in this hideous world.
My clothes were ragged and the only thing I owned untouched by the
world’s nefarious tricks were the beautiful bullhide boots that I
had stolen awhile back, back before the balloon, from some damnable
itinerant preacher. I regretted having to kill him, but he awoke
just as I had snatched the boots from his bedside. What sin this
might have been, seemed nothing to me compared to the sin that God
had committed in sentencing me to a life like this.

I hadn’t thought of that moment for a while.
Killing a man. A man who wanted to kill me. The world is changed
now, but I assure you it doesn’t make taking a life easier. I chose
not to think of it anymore.

The river calmed after a time and I could
make out the silhouettes of reeds and cattails along the edge,
black as if poisoned by the darkness and bent and broken like a
giant had stumbled in the dark, his oafish hands breaking his fall
near the shore. The slim current led me toward the bank and I
leaned over and started paddling, feeling the nibbles of invisible
fish on my hands. After a time, about a hundred yards downstream, I
saw a fire glowing through the reeds, a cyclops eye of orange and
red with jellyfish tendrils of smoke escaping to the sky. Three men
sat near the fire, one standing and holding a rifle. I called out
for help. They turned in unison toward me and immediately I had
regretted my outburst. One called out to me and I thought I heard
another say, “should I shoot him now?” but my mind was playing
tricks on me, I was sure. A rope was tossed out and I thought for a
moment to forgo its welcoming hand, but I was near starved and
shivering uncontrollably. I grabbed it and was pulled to shore,
fending my way through the brittle grasses that felt like skeleton
arms and legs, sere and stiff, the smell of dead things in the
air.

“Thank you,” I said. “My name is Walter,” I
lied. “Yours?”

“We have no names here. To name something is
to control it. And, anyway, what’s it to you?” the tall one said.
He was clearly the oldest, the other two looking no more than in
their teens, but drawn and sallow, the dim light of the fire
swallowed by the dark sockets of their sunken eyes. One of them
held the rifle, his thumb caressing the stock rhythmically.

“Nothing really. Just being friendly.”

“There ain’t no friends out here either. What
are you doing on the river in such a state?”

“I was upstream a few days’ ride back when a
storm hit. Lost my oars in the rapids from the cloudburst and had
my rudder crushed on the rocks. Lucky I’m alive.”

“Lucky, yeah.” The tall man spoke like a
Southerner, the others were voiceless but all three were thin as
wraiths. The youngest had on a tattered shirt with sleeves unevenly
short as if something had been chewing on them.

“Might I sit by the fire a spell. I’m soaked
through to the core.”

“Sure. Sit.”

I sat uneasily feeling the warmth of the fire
immediately. A light rain began to fall and spatter on the coals. A
large skillet was balanced on a few rocks and in it were a few
lumps of meat, black and dry, an indeterminate feast.

“Have a piece of meat. Hand him a plate,”
said the tall man to the boy standing to my left. “You could
probably use something to eat if what you say is true.”

“Well, thank you.”

The boy, whose hair I could now see was a
knotted mass of red, went to the fire and with a long thin knife,
stabbed a chunk of the flesh and placed it in a tin plate with a
thud.

“It ain’t pork,” said the tall man.

“Beef then?” I said.

“No,” he replied.

I tore off a piece and chewed its tasteless
fibres, thick and dusty dry, my teeth gnashing it as best I could,
flavorless, foreign, cooked through like a stone. One boy stood
behind me, the other squatting, the rifle butt on the ground, the
barrel held so that he could lean his face against it.

“Them is nice boots you got there,” the tall
man said. “Where’d you get ’em?”

“They were a gift. From my father,” I said
looking down.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

“I don’t care what you think.”

I looked at his boots and saw they were torn
and held together with bits of string and bailing wire, a dirty toe
peeking out between the two lips of a split in the leather.

“Them boots look like they too big for you,”
he said.

“I like ’em that way. Room to grow,” I smiled
without a response from any of the three who were quiet as
pallbearers, the light tapping of the rain a somber drone.

“Where was you headin’?” he asked.

“ ’Cross the river to Mecklenburg.”

“What for?”

“My family is there. My father.”

“The same what give you them boots, huh?”

“Listen,” I said. “I appreciate your
kindness, but I got to get going. Does that road lead back up
north?”

“That road goes to hell, boy. Have some more
meat. We’re all done with her.”

“No thanks. I am thankful to you,
though.”

After a time, he started removing his boots
and when he had finished, he signaled to the boy behind me who took
off his and put the man’s on. The boy’s boots were more tattered
than the tall man’s and a rank odor seeped out the top of them.

“Now you take those boots, mister, hear? And
gimme your gun there.”

Outnumbered, I took off my boots and placed
them neatly in front of me, handed over my pistol. The boy took the
boots and handed them to the tall man who slipped them on. He
stomped a few times, did a quick jig and said, “These is fine,
right fine. I thank you.”

I put on the boy’s boots without saying a
word, the boy with the rifle standing suddenly and looking shiftily
between the tall man and me.

“Should I shoot ’im, Pa?”

“No, I don’t think so. He seems tame enough.
Let’s get goin’.”

“But what about…?” the boy with the rifle
said.

“I told you that fire would work. I don’t
need to wait no more. We done good enough. Pack up.”

One boy picked up the dishes and the skillet,
dumping the lump of meat into the dying fire where it caused a
shower of sparks to fly up through the damp air. The rain had
stopped. The boy behind me stroked the back of my head. “He’s a
pretty one, Pa,” he said.

“Not tonight, boy. Best we get goin’.”

The three of them slipped off into the
darkness as if they were made of it, the night closing behind them.
At my back, the dim edge of the sun peered beneath the cauldron lid
of the sky.

I had two choices and when I thought about
it, they were reduced to one. I had to

follow those guys. They had guns and
ammunition and while they did not have any food that I could
discern—the meat in the fire had charred to a black rock—the guns
were at least a way of safely searching.